The Shadow of 1984

Madras, and a small holiday

In October 1984, I travelled to Madras for a conference on Allergy and Immunology at Stanley Medical College. For me, it was a professional outing. For Bhavana, it was our first real trip together after marriage. We had been married barely eight months, and the excitement of travelling with your wife still feels new at that stage.

We took the Grand Trunk Express. It carried us steadily south, as if it had been doing this job for a hundred years and had no reason to hurry. When we reached Madras, the city greeted us with smells I still remember—jasmine in someone’s hair, sea air on the roads, and that unmistakable comfort of filter coffee.

The conference had its lectures and its slides, but my best memory from that trip came from outside the auditorium.

Maitreyan’s house, and the chapati struggle

I called my old friend from GMC Nagpur, Vasudevan Maitreyan. In those days he was studying Medical Oncology, fully absorbed in the world of cancer—quiet, serious, and hardworking. Later, he would enter politics and become a familiar name. But in 1984 he was simply Maitreyan—my batchmate, my friend, and someone I trusted.

He invited Bhavana and me home for dinner.

His family was Tamil Brahmin—rice, sambar, rasam, curd rice… the kind of food that arrives with its own rhythm. But they had decided to cook a North Indian meal for us. It was such a sweet idea, and such a difficult one.

In the kitchen, I watched his sisters wrestle with wheat dough. For us, chapatis are muscle memory. For them, it looked like a geometry problem. The dough stuck to their fingers. The circles came out like the map of a new country. They rolled, adjusted, tried again, and refused to give up.

When we finally sat down, they watched us closely—like examiners waiting for a viva answer.

“Is it okay?”
“Does it taste right?”
“Dal is fine?”

We ate with genuine pleasure and told them the truth: it was delicious. Not because it was “perfect North Indian food”, but because it was full of effort and affection. Those chapatis were not just bread. They were hospitality.

That evening, Maitreyan’s mother did something that stayed with us. Before we left, she performed a small aarti. She applied sindoor to Bhavana’s maang and tucked flowers into her hair—blessing her the way mothers do, without asking what language you speak.

We walked back to our hotel feeling strangely at home in a city that was still new to us.

October 31: when the city held its breath

The next morning, the mood changed.

We heard the news in fragments first, and then clearly enough to believe it: Indira Gandhi had been assassinated.

Only two years earlier, I had seen her at Pavnar, sitting near Vinobaji with quiet respect. I remembered her stillness, her seriousness, the way she seemed fully present in that room. It felt impossible that she could be gone.

The conference ended abruptly. Madras, usually busy and noisy, turned into a different place. Shops shut. Streets emptied. Even the air felt cautious. It wasn’t panic. It was a kind of stunned silence.

Bhavana and I stayed inside our hotel room. This was long before mobile phones. Trunk calls were a struggle on normal days. In those days, they were nearly impossible. We could not reach Wardha. We could not reassure our families. We sat with the radio and listened, waiting for facts, receiving rumours.

And rumours, as you know, are never gentle.

We heard about violence in the North. About Sikhs being attacked. About trains being stopped. About mobs. We were in the South, far away from the worst of it, but distance doesn’t protect you from fear. It only adds helplessness to it.

On the third day, we stepped out for a short walk, hoping the city had returned to itself. It hadn’t. The roads still looked drained of life. We came back quickly, as if the hotel room was the only safe address we had.

The long ride back

After a few days, trains began running again. We got seats on the GT Express back towards Nagpur.

Normally, a long train journey in India has its own comfort—vendors shouting, children running, someone offering you a banana for no reason. This time, the compartments stayed tense. When the train slowed down between stations, people fell quiet and looked out of the windows with suspicion, as if the fields could suddenly produce trouble.

Nothing happened. But the fear travelled with us, sitting quietly in the corner.

When we finally reached Wardha, I felt relief in my bones. We had come back to familiar roads, familiar faces, and the simple comfort of being able to tell our families: we are safe.

That trip gave me two memories that don’t sit easily together—chapatis made with love, and a city going silent overnight. Madras offered both. And somehow, both stayed.

---